Texarkana Moonlight Murders: Swinney, the Attacks, and the Film

The Texarkana Moonlight Murders were a string of nighttime attacks that killed five people and wounded three others across the twin cities of Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas, over roughly ten weeks in the spring of 1946. An unknown assailant, quickly nicknamed the Phantom Killer by the local Texarkana Gazette, mostly targeted couples parked on secluded lovers’ lanes. He was never identified or charged, and the case remains one of the most notorious unsolved serial murder cases in American history.¹

The Five Attacks

The violence began on February 22, 1946, on a lovers’ lane in Bowie County, Texas, west of town. A masked man attacked Jimmy Hollis and Mary Jeanne Larey. Hollis suffered a cracked skull. Larey was sexually assaulted. Both survived, and at the time there was little reason to think the assault was anything more than an isolated crime.¹

Exactly one month later, on March 24, the attacks escalated. Richard L. Griffin, a 29-year-old war veteran, and 17-year-old Red River Arsenal worker Polly Ann Moore were found shot to death in Griffin’s Oldsmobile sedan about a mile west of Texarkana on Highway 67. Both had been shot in the back of the head, and the sheriff reported Griffin’s pockets had been rifled. Investigators found few clues at the scene.²

Three weeks later, on April 14, Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker were killed at Spring Lake Park in Texarkana, Texas. Three attacks now followed the same general pattern — couples targeted at night in secluded locations — and genuine panic set in across the community.¹

The final attack came on May 3, 1946, and it broke the pattern. Virgil Starks was sitting in his isolated farmhouse in Miller County, Arkansas, when he was shot to death through a front window. His wife, Katie Starks, ran to the phone after hearing the shots and was shot twice in the face. She survived and escaped to a neighboring farmhouse for help.³ The weapon used on the Starks was a .22 caliber pistol rather than the .32 caliber revolver linked to the earlier murders, and some investigators closest to the case questioned whether the same person was responsible. Tire tracks at the farmhouse matched those from earlier crime scenes, however, and the attack was generally attributed to the Phantom.¹

A City in Terror

With each attack the fear in Texarkana deepened. Citizens armed themselves and stayed indoors after dark, “literally dreading sundown,” as one account put it. Reporters from across the country descended on the city and coined the term “Moonlight Murders.” The Gazette gave the unknown assailant his lasting nickname.¹

The panic produced its own casualties. Residents turned on their neighbors with false accusations. In one grim episode, a college student from a prominent local family killed himself in his room in Fayetteville, leaving behind a false confession to the crimes. When neighbors reported strange lights at the Starks farmhouse after the shooting there, police surrounded the property and found a Life magazine reporter and Texas Ranger Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas taking flash-bulb photographs of the crime scene. Gonzaullas, sent to help lead the investigation, famously encouraged anxious residents to “shoot first, ask questions later.”⁴

The Investigation and How Swinney Surfaced

The case drew law enforcement from multiple agencies on both sides of the state line. Local police from the Texas and Arkansas sides of the city increased patrols on secluded roads. The Texas Rangers dispatched Gonzaullas to assist.⁴

A critical break came from Arkansas law enforcement official Max Tackett, who identified a recurring pattern: before each murder, a car had been stolen and then abandoned. In July 1946, Tackett and fellow trooper Charley Boyd helped set up a stakeout of a reported stolen car on the Arkansas side. That stakeout led investigators to a woman who claimed to be the girlfriend of a local ex-convict named Youell Swinney. She initially provided specific details about the murders that had not been released to the public.¹ A photograph from the Tillman Johnson Collection confirms that Tackett and Boyd were present with Swinney at the Miller County Sheriff’s Office that month.⁵

Why Swinney Was Never Charged

Many of the officers who worked the case, including Bowie County Sheriff Bill Presley, believed Swinney was the Phantom Killer.⁵ The case against him rested largely on his girlfriend’s statements, and those statements presented an insurmountable problem. Her story changed over time. She eventually married Swinney, which meant she could not be compelled to testify against him under spousal privilege. Without her testimony and without hard physical evidence, prosecutors declined to charge Swinney for the murders.¹

Swinney was sent to prison in 1947 on an auto theft conviction. According to those who worked the case, every lawman involved “never quit mulling the story over and over in hopes of turning up the hard evidence that could have convicted Swinney of the murders.”⁵ That evidence never materialized. Swinney died in 1998 without ever being charged with the killings. In a 2014 book on the case, journalist James Presley — a nephew of Sheriff Bill Presley — laid out what reviewers called a compelling argument that Swinney was the killer, drawing on family records and years of research.⁶

Where the Case Stands Today

No one else has been credibly identified as the killer in the decades since. The case has attracted urban legends — including the widely circulated “Hookman” story, which has no evidenced connection to the actual crimes — and occasional false claims of inside knowledge.⁵ In February 2020, the FBI released an archive of more than 1,100 pages of documents through its public vault, including a handprint identified as belonging to a suspect. The release drew significant interest, but reporting at the time did not indicate the documents pointed to any new conclusions.⁷ No public reporting has indicated that modern forensic techniques such as DNA analysis or genetic genealogy have been applied to the case evidence.

The Film That Shaped Public Memory

For many Americans, the murders are known less through crime reporting than through a low-budget 1976 film. The Town That Dreaded Sundown, directed by Charles B. Pierce on a budget of roughly $400,000, was loosely based on the 1946 attacks and earned approximately $5 million.⁸ The film changed the victims’ names, placed the murders in Arkansas rather than primarily in Texas, and invented a police chase in which the killer escapes; the real Phantom simply vanished. Pierce acknowledged of his approach that “even truth could use a little help.”⁹

The film is now widely regarded as one of the earliest entries in the slasher genre, predating Halloween by two years. Its sack-faced killer is credited with influencing the look of Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part 2, and film historians have described it as providing the “basic structural DNA” for the slasher films that dominated the 1980s.⁹ Its poster tagline, “Today he still lurks the streets of Texarkana, Ark,” was provocative enough that local officials threatened a lawsuit. Since 2003, the Texas Department of Parks and Recreation has held free public screenings of the film each October in Spring Lake Park, the same Texarkana park where Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker were killed in April 1946.⁸

1
Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Texarkana Moonlight Murders
2
Texarkana Gazette. Polly Ann Moore, Richard Griffin Murder Victims
3
Texarkana Gazette. Phantom Killer’s Last Alleged Victim Shot to Death 70 Years Ago
4
Texas State Historical Association. Gonzaullas, Manuel Trazazas “Lone Wolf”
5
Texas Monthly. Texarkana Murder Mystery
6
Texas Observer. The Observer Review: James Presley’s The Phantom Killer
7
Texarkana Gazette. FBI Releases Phantom Killer Archive of More Than 1,100 Pages
8
Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (The Movies)
9
Film Comment. The Town That Dreaded Sundown